


A Different Perspective

by sassy_madwoman_with_a_box



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Euro-centric, Gen, In-universe fic, Original Characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-16
Updated: 2012-07-31
Packaged: 2017-11-10 02:26:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sassy_madwoman_with_a_box/pseuds/sassy_madwoman_with_a_box
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Within the universe of Supernatural, there are hunters spread all over the world doing interesting things. This is a canon-compliant fic about what it's like hunting ghosts, monsters and demons in Europe while dealing with the fallout when a couple of Americans get up to their own earth-shaking adventures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. London

**Author's Note:**

> I've set this in 2007 when the Devil's Gate got opened, because that's the first time that the Winchesters' actions really affect the wider world. There's so many interesting legends and history in Europe that I wanted to explore that more, which is what I'm attempting to do here. This is the first section of the first 'episode', if that makes sense, but I'm working on the next section and I have some outlines of where I'm going to put them through to 2012 (that's assuming that people actually think it's worth reading). It's a bit of an experiment, feel free to ask any questions or fling any ideas at me. :)

Leah awoke to the sound of a piercing scream. Confused, she turned on the lamp just in time to watch Danika fall off the top bunk in a tumble of blonde hair and muffled curses. 

The screaming had been joined by shouting and loud sobbing by the time both girls had flung open the bedroom door, although as they raced down the stairs the house became ominously quiet. Leah slowed when they neared the kitchen, trying to quiet her steps, but Danika leaped forward and wrenched the door open.

Leah’s grandmother Janna crouched over her son-in-law’s blood-soaked body as she glared up at her daughter. 

Only Lisa turned to look at the girls. 

“Janna?” ventured Danika. The old woman didn’t even glance in her direction.

“Mum?” Leah asked in a tremulous voice. 

She grinned viciously and her eyes flicked to black. “I’m not your mummy, you little slut. I’m just here for your whore grandmother and then I’ll be on my way.”

“Go back to bed, Leah,” the old woman ordered, face contorted with hatred. “Lisa and I were just having a discussion.” She stood and reached for the salt on the counter behind her. “We’ll be done in a few minutes.” 

Leah’s gaze went to her father’s crumpled form, beneath which was a spreading pool of blood. “Dad?” 

“Daddy’s dead, darling,” Lisa said mockingly. “Would you like a hug?” She cheerfully waved her bloody kitchen knife. 

Leah was looking desperately from face to face but unable to find any kind of understanding. “What the fuck is going on?” 

Danika had disappeared into the pantry. “We need the book,” Janna called after her, eyes still fixed on the black-eyed creature before her. 

“No you don’t,” it snarled, lunging forward and slamming into an invisible wall. It cursed and looked both up and down without success. “Where’s the trap?” 

“Underneath the upstairs carpet,” Janna replied. She flicked the salt at the creature and bared her teeth when it hissed in pain. “You will leave when you have my permission, demon.” 

Leah slid to the tile floor. “I can’t do this,” she gasped. “I think I’m hyperventilating.” Danika reappeared and wordlessly handed her a paper bag before stepping over her legs and passing a sheaf of paper to Janna. 

“Secure the exits,” she instructed the girl, who nodded and strode out of the room. Janna flung more salt at the demon, wiping tear tracks from her cheeks and scowling viciously at it. “Who are you?” 

It grinned. “You don’t remember? Svinia. You were younger then, much more energetic. Angry, too, about all those missing babies; you haven’t got that kind of fire left in you now.”

Recognition flickered across Janna’s weathered face. “Sofiya.” 

The demon twirled her knife. “Miss me? Hell was fun, but not nearly as much fun as I’m going to have with you. A pair of hunters opened a Devil’s Gate in North America; the popcorn’s free for the trip up, and boy is there a lot of popcorn going around. An exorcism will give you three weeks at most before I’m back, and your pretty little granddaughter is going to be first on the hit list.” She stopped and looked at the knife contemplatively. “Of course, I could have a little fun with your daughter first.” Sofiya plunged the blade deep into her own belly. She cocked her head in amusement as she watched their horrified reactions before twisting it in deeper. “Exorcise away, slut.” 

Janna glanced down at the papers and hesitated.

“Baba, what is going on?” Leah asked, voice tiny and confused.

The woman’s grip tightened around the sheaf and she sucked in a deep breath. 

Whatever she was about to say was interrupted by an immense crash as the front door exploded. 

Janna picked up the salt and swept out of the kitchen to investigate at the same moment that Danika burst in through the other door, a jug tucked under her arm and a wickedly curved knife in her hand. 

“Front door is secured,” she barked at Janna’s back. 

The woman nodded. “Keep this one bound while I exorcise the other,” she called over her shoulder as she continued forward.

Leah leaned forward and peered through the open kitchen door. Her grandmother was reading from the paper and absently flicking salt at a cringing figure. As she watched, it dissolved into a pillar of smoke that swirled angrily against its magical confines. 

“What the hell is she saying?” 

“It’s an old Persian ritual,” Danika said briefly. “It kills demons when used in conjunction with a Wu Xing style Devil’s Trap.”

Sofiya snorted softly and started throwing her knife at the roof, clearly attempting to break through and destroy the trap. “You can’t kill demons with words, sweetheart.” Fragments of insulation began to shower down on her and she stopped flinging the knife.

“Persian? So, Aramaic or Sumerian, right?” 

The girl glanced at Leah, who still clutched the paper bag in one hand. “Aramaic. Is this how you usually deal with stressful events?” 

“Yes.” 

There was a moment of silence broken only by Janna’s murmuring and the fleshy thumps as Sofiya amused herself by cutting into her meat suit. 

“How long does this ritual take?” 

“About five minutes.” 

Sofiya cut deeply into the artery in Lisa’s arm and started flicking blood at the girls. 

“Could you maybe not do that?” Danika said in irritation. The demon poked her tongue out and started flicking blood at Leah as well. The girl stared at it in horror until Danika roughly turned her away. She didn’t resist the move. 

“I could add in some vomit and head-spinning as well if you like?” Sofiya offered. “The Exorcist was a fantastic film- I rooted for the demon, naturally. Pity about the inaccuracies, but that’s only to be expected from humans.” 

Leah turned back to glare at it, but Danika appeared consumed in thought. “I could let you go,” she said, watching Sofiya beneath lowered lashes. 

“She killed Gary!” Leah objected, thumping her on the arm. “We can’t let her get away with it!” 

Danika just continued to watch the demon, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Look at her eyes, her hands,” she told Leah. “She’s nervous, hopeful, willing to please. She’s desperate not to be exorcised.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So if there’s a Gate open like she said, she’d have no trouble getting back out.” 

“Fuck you,” the demon snarled. “Hell isn’t fun for anybody.” 

Leah huffed. “What exactly are you getting at here?”

“Either the Wyoming Gate wasn’t opened or it was and it got closed soon after,” she replied pointedly. “If she was lying about which Gate, she wouldn’t have been so specific or she would have named one harder to verify, like the Mongolian Gate. Instead she said North America, which means that it did get opened but it also got shut.”

“Fascinating,” Leah said flatly. “Why do I care?” 

“If a Gate got opened, you can bet that a lot of them clawed their way out. Bearing in mind that Janna’s pissed off quite a few demons in her time, odds are they’ll be coming for her soon.” She paused and glanced at the pillar of smoke in the front corridor. “More will be coming,” she corrected. 

Leah’s heart sunk in her chest. “There’s going to be more of this?”

“Much more. The demon out the front is just a teaser. We’ll need the Mog, which means we need to get to Paris. We’ll ring up the usual crowd, see if we can’t organise ourselves a safe house.”

“There’s a usual crowd?” Leah asked incredulously. 

Danika ignored the question, redirecting her attention to the demon in Lisa’s body. “This ritual will kill you, properly kill you. We haven’t sent anything to Hell for quite a while now; we just kill it on the surface.”

Sofiya cocked her head. “What do you want from me?”

“You keep Lisa’s body safe until we can find a way to heal it.” 

Leah looked to Danika in alarm. “You’re giving my mother’s body to a demon?” 

Sofiya and Danika both ignored her. “I’m happy to guard the meatsuit, but you’re not that stupid. What’s the catch?”

“I want a blood pact.”

The demon started laughing but it trailed off when she saw Danika’s determined expression. “You can’t be serious,” she pleaded. 

Danika inclined her head towards Janna, amusement glinting in her dark eyes. “Thirty seconds left and then I get to make you go poof. Your call.” 

There was an interminably long pause as human and demon stared off and Leah glanced from one to the other in confusion. 

“Fine,” Sofiya ground out. She glared at Danika until the girl looked away. 

Danika flung open the fridge, quickly examined the contents and then opened the freezer instead. “You got any lamb?” she demanded. 

“On the sink,” Leah gabbled, pointing. “To defrost, because it was in the freezer. We were going to have it for dinner, Gary was going to cook them, he had this marinade all planned, Mum can’t cook you see, so Gary was-“

“You can shut up now,” Danika cut in. She sliced the packet open and squeezed one of the steaks. “Good and juicy.”

Leah watched with horror as the girl withdrew chalk from a pocket and drew a number of symbols on the floor before tracing them with lamb blood from the meat. The last of it she squeezed into a plastic cup. 

“No proper goblet?” Sofiya demanded. 

Danika pointedly drew a flower on the cup and then smiled toothily. “The knife, please.” 

Sofiya paused to cut into her own hand before passing it over; Danika took it and went to cut herself but paused, glancing at Janna in the front hallway. Instead she yanked Leah forward, carving into her hand with brutal efficiency. Leah cried out at the pain but the other girl just ignored her and squeezed her hand until it dripped into the plastic cup.

Leah watched with mounting horror as the demon dropped to its knees and accepted the mixed lamb and human blood on its forehead, temples, eyelids, ears and lips. 

They sealed the deal with a kiss that Leah considered involved rather more tongue than was necessary. When the demon released her, she immediately took a dishtowel and wrapped it around her hand, wincing. 

“You have your spell, now release me,” the demon snapped.

“What the fuck was that for?”

“Tell Sofiya that she must not harm any of your blood or reveal their secrets,” Danika ordered, pushing the girl forward again. 

“You must not harm any of my blood or reveal any of our secrets,” Leah repeated, still staring at Danika in confusion. “What-?“ The other girl ignored her, darting out of the kitchen. 

There was an awkward silence as Leah stared after Danika and Sofiya pushed against the magical barrier expectantly. 

An eerie wind raced through the kitchen and both women peered around the corner to watch the final moments of Janna’s exorcism. Janna was reciting the last sentences of the ritual in a roar, the wind beginning to pluck at her dark hair, when the pillar of smoke began to crackle with flashes of electricity. The demon coalesced into human form and swore viciously at the woman before hiccupping back and forth between smoke and human and then imploding into nothingness. 

Leah nodded appreciatively and then gulped as her grandmother turned and walked slowly, ominously, back to the kitchen. 

“I see you’re still here,” Janna noted sourly. Sofiya poked her tongue out at the woman. 

Leah wasn’t sure who her grandmother was talking to but replied anyway. “I’m still pretty confused but apparently we’re going to Paris?” 

“If a Gate is open, we’ll need to get some reinforcements,” Janna agreed. “Which means Paris, yes. Once we’ve managed the first wave, we can work out how to shut the Gate again.”

“Danika said the Gate was shut,” Leah interjected. 

“Danika hopes the Gate was shut,” Janna corrected. “Demons lie and she’s not as clever as she thinks she is. Which brings me back to what to do with the demon here.”

Sofiya held up her palm, in which was carved a strange symbol; the wound was already clotting. 

“A binding mark,” Janna observed. “You’re stuck in the body; how does-“ she stopped and leaned forward, examining the demon’s face. “A binding mark to seal a blood pact,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “But no modifying clauses on the neck.” The woman snorted derisively. “You signed yourself completely over to Danika? That’s desperate, even for you.” 

“Some big shit’s going down real soon,” Sofiya told her in a voice that promised violence. “Let’s just say I’m betting that you two don’t outlive me.” She looked up suddenly. “Well, that’s me out. Say bye to Dany for me, kay?” she said with a wink. 

The demon disappeared. 

“Danika!” Janna roared. 

The girl thudded down the steps. “Yes?”

“You forgot to tell your new pet to stay,” she growled. 

Danika stared at the empty space where the demon had been. “Oops.”

“Yeah, oops. Now she’s running off to tell her buddies where we are,” Janna snapped. “That’s if we ever see her again, which we won’t because she’s going to avoid us like the plague. Instead we get a demon who can easily track us and send any number of enemies our way.”

“She won’t be able to reveal anything about the blood that binds her,” she objected. “I’m not entirely stupid.” 

“Which is helpful only if you’re blood related to me, which you’re not,” the women retorted. She opened her mouth to continue but stopped at the sight of Danika’s unblemished hands. Jaw set, she turned to look at Leah. “You bloody idiot,” she said softly. 

“What did I do?” Leah said indignantly.

“The demon will have to obey Leah, and you to a lesser extent as well,” Danika interjected, talking fast. “That’s why I didn’t bind her to me. She won’t be able to reveal anything about you, and she’s bound to your bloodline because of the meatsuit she’s stuck in.” 

Janna squeezed the bridge of her nose, taking deep steadying breaths. 

“Janna?”

She didn’t reply immediately, forcibly relaxing her hands and smoothing down her dress first. “We will talk about this later,” the woman said quietly. Danika winced. “But for the moment, at least stop referring to my daughter’s possessed body as a meatsuit.”

“She’s bound to the mea-er, body now; she swore to keep it safe. All we need to do is find a way to heal it and then we just unbind and kill her. Lisa lives, Sofiya dies. Everybody wins,” Danika said quickly. 

Janna’s hands balled themselves into fists again. 

Leah looked down. “Gary doesn’t win.” They all looked down at his corpse. 

“Gary never won at anything,” Janna remarked with a sigh. “I can’t imagine why he’d start now.” 

They had a moment of silence for Gary.

“Paris?” suggested Danika. 

“Paris,” Janna confirmed. “Pack and meet back down here in half an hour.”

\--+\\-+++-/+--

Danika had her bag packed in a minute flat, so she sat down on the bed and watched Leah pack.

“I expected you to know more,” Danika said idly, leaning back against the bed. “Janna said your family was out but I never thought you’d be completely without protection like this.”

“When she says pack, she means for a short trip, right? Not all my stuff?” Leah asked, throwing clothes around in a panic. 

“Your father is dead, your mother has been kidnapped and there are likely dozens of demons on their way to kill everybody Janna ever loved. I’m going to go ahead and say that this may take a while to resolve.”

Leah would happily have stabbed the girl at the moment; sarcasm was the very last thing she needed right now. She retaliated by jamming jeans into her duffel bag with a great deal of unnecessary force, yelping as it pushed against her injured hand. 

“We’ll regroup in Paris, meet up with some other hunters and get you to a safe house. Then we’ll go hunt the eager ones down, set you up with some proper protections and work on getting something to heal Lisa.” Danika stretched languorously across the bed. “Have you got an anti-possession tattoo, or were you too busy having a life to get even that basic level of security?”

“Could you maybe stop being such a bitch?”

“Could you maybe start acting like you’ve got a brain in your head?” Danika countered. 

Leah turned to glare at her. “I’m pre-med, you asshole. Forgive me for taking a bit of time to process my life falling into ruins around me!” 

“Yeah, I can see that you’re all broken up about your dead father,” she retorted. “Forgive me for thinking you can deal with a bit of demon possession on the side.” 

“He’s not my father,” Leah said sullenly. “He’s my step-dad, I’ve only met him twice. My father died when I was twelve.” 

“You still just watched your mother stab herself repeatedly.” Danika pointed out. “Most people are more distressed about that sort of thing.” 

Leah stopped trying to jam her entire underwear drawer into her duffel bag. “But she’s going to be fine, right? You said you would find a way to heal her.” 

Danika switched her gaze to her fingernails. 

“Danika?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’ve never seen anything that could heal that.” 

Leah gnawed on her bottom lip. “Are you sure we need to heal her at all? The cuts in her arm had healed by the time you did that pact thingy.”

“Demons heal from injury quite quickly, but their meatsuits don’t. When Sofiya leaves the body, it will revert back to its broken state.” 

Leah contemplated this. “So my mother is basically dead.” 

There was a pause. Danika moved her gaze to the ceiling, which was apparently of extreme interest. “I’m going to say yes,” she hedged. 

“Is that to imply that there is an answer other than yes?” she asked suspiciously.

“This won’t make you feel better, but her soul is still in the body, it’s just repressed.” 

“I-“ Leah began, but stopped, staring at the other girl. Her mother had been forced to watch as she killed her own husband, sliced into her own skin and threatened her family. “I don’t even know what to say to that.” 

Danika wrinkled her nose. “Yeah. Maybe just don’t think about it.” 

She swallowed and stepped over to her wardrobe again. “What kind of clothes do I need?” 

“Wear something you’re fine with getting destroyed,” Danika advised. 

“I have barely any clothes here, and all of them nice,” Leah complained. “The rest are still in my flat- oh god, my roommate. Will they attack there?” 

Danika shrugged. “Probably not, but we should probably stop by to put down some Traps before we leave the country. In a month or so we’ll probably have cleaned up most of the demon mess. Healing your mother may take longer but the demon won’t be able to bother you so you’ll be able to go back to pre-med or whatever you’re doing.” 

“What?” Leah demanded, voice muffled by the fact that her head was still in the wardrobe. She pulled it out and repeated herself. 

“It’s best to leave these kinds of things to the professionals, don’t you think?” Danika suggested patronisingly. 

Leah blinked. “Wow. I think that was possibly the most condescending thing I have ever heard.” 

“Honey, you didn’t even know what a demon was until one possessed your mother. You spent most of tonight cowering in the corner. What, exactly, makes you think that you’re capable of going on a hunt?” 

“I stand corrected,” she remarked, striding over to the bed. “That was the most condescending thing I have ever heard.” 

“And yet it remains accurate,” Danika replied sweetly. 

Leah stepped closer, trying to intimidate the girl with her height. “That’s my mother that’s been taken; I have every right to help her.” 

At a leisurely pace, Danika gathered herself and stood. She was eye level with the other girl and she took great pleasure in bringing herself forward until they were nose to nose, clearly closer than Leah was comfortable with; and then she waited, staring the other girl down.

“Well?” Leah demanded when the silence became unbearable. 

Danika cocked an eyebrow. “The last thing we need is another liability to carry around. You know nothing, you have no skills. You’re a walking target and a whiney one at that.” 

“What makes you such hot shit?”

“If you knew half the shit I’ve done,” she replied, voice taking on a hard edge. “You wouldn’t even dream of questioning me. I’ve been doing this since I was seventeen, which makes it five years now. Most hunters don’t last three. What makes you think you can handle it?” Danika spoke frankly, but there was still an unbearable arrogance in the set of her jaw, the angle of her head. 

“I’m not asking for a lifetime membership,” she replied through gritted teeth. “I want my mother back, that’s it.” 

Danika snorted. “It’s always a lifetime membership, just not necessarily a long one.” 

They might have glared for some time more were it not for the steps creaking alarmingly. 

Janna poked her head in the door. “You two done yet?” 

“Yes, Janna,” Danika said immediately, stepping away. 

Leah scowled and shoved a few more things into her bag. 

“Well?” 

“Yes,” Leah snapped. “I have packed what little clothing I have. Thanks awfully for all the warning,” she added sarcastically. 

“You got something to say?” Janna asked sharply. 

Leah zipped her bag and straightened, avoiding her grandmother’s gaze. “No,” she said sullenly. 

“Good. Let’s move out.” 

They took Lisa’s car, stopping by Leah’s apartment to pick up some more adequate clothing and draw sigils over all the doorways. Leah left a rambling note to her roommate while Janna rigged several water-filled buckets around the flat. 

“What, you’re going to prank the demons to death?” Leah sniggered. 

“They’re holy water. I explained this in the car, it’s like acid to demons,” she replied briefly. “You ready?” 

Leah gestured vaguely towards the bathroom. “No, I still need to grab-“

“And yet you still have time for smart remarks,” Janna interjected. 

Leah made a face and moved on, barely avoiding the precariously balanced chairs that Danika was standing on to reach the ceiling. 

“What’s the point of trapping them if they’re just going to sit there?” she called, the tiled bathroom making her voice echo. 

“These aren’t Traps, they’re symbols to block demons. They can’t pass through them.”

“That still leaves them sitting there though, right?” 

Danika pushed too hard with her pen and accidentally gouged a line into the ceiling. “Are you getting at something or just trying to annoy me?” She pulled it away, examined the result and continued gouging, this time wearing an ugly smirk.

Leah emerged from the bathroom, forcing yet another bag closed. “Exorcisms will get rid of them for however long it takes to claw them out of hell, right? Why not just record one, put it on an iPod and hook it up to the speaker system on loop?”

“That’s not a terrible idea,” Janna admitted. 

“Looks like she has some Dobrovich in her after all,” remarked Danika. More ideas like that and she might actually regret destroying Leah’s ceiling. 

Janna finished with the bucket and stepped off the stool. “Make it a standard exorcism, they’re not going to stand around and wait for the Aramaic one.”

\--+\\-+++-/+--

Some hours later, they were on a train to Paris. 

“How bad is this going to get, exactly?” Leah asked after an extended silence. “Should I be ringing up my cousins? My lecturers? The postman?”

“Don’t take that tone with me, young lady,” Janna warned. “This was an unexpected situation and we are dealing with it as best we can.” 

“Yeah, I can see that,” she snarled. “Nice to see you too, grandma. First time I’ve seen you in ten years and you bring a demon as a birthday present and get my mum killed to boot. Hey, do you think maybe next time you could just stay the fuck home?”

“Maybe I should,” Janna replied, rising to the bait. “Except, oh wait, you’d be possessed or dead by now. Danika and I can’t be scryed; how do you think they found us? If we hadn’t been there, it would have gone much differently.” 

“Because my mother and Gary got such good deals out of that arrangement,” she retorted sarcastically. 

Janna just stared at her wordlessly for a moment before turning away and getting up. “I can’t deal with her. Danika, you deal with her. I have calls to make.” 

The girl nodded, though clearly disgruntled. Janna paused in the doorway. “To clarify, I should add that you shouldn’t perform any rituals or magic to make her more agreeable. Just stop her from leaving the compartment or hurting anybody.” 

“Yes, Janna,” she agreed, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. 

The moment she was gone, Leah turned to Danika with a glare. 

“Well?” 

“I would say that you won that one,” Danika remarked, pulling her bag off the luggage rack, “But since you’re confined to this compartment I’m going to say that Janna won it instead.” 

Leah struggled to find something offensive about that and switched tactics. “Why do you obey her every whim?” 

“Why wouldn’t I?” Danika asked with a frown. “More to the point, why don’t you?” 

“Are you some kind of weird clone slave or something?” Leah demanded. “You aren’t even related!”

Danika was rummaging through the bag, but paused to look up at her. “Janna saved me,” she replied simply. 

Leah cocked an eyebrow and Danika absently resumed her rummaging. “How can I explain this in a way that you will understand? Your mother gave you life, clothed you, fed you, taught you everything you know, yes?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. I did go to school, but most other stuff my mum taught me.” 

Danika nodded enthusiastically. “So after this wonderful person has done all this for you, asking barely anything in return, is it too much that you do what they ask?” 

“Yes,” Leah replied, without even thinking about it. 

Danika stared at her. “Seriously? How can you react like that?” 

Leah shrugged. “She’s my mother, but she’s also a human and she makes mistakes like anybody else. I’m not going to obey her every command, especially not since I’ve got better things to do most of the time.”

Still staring at her like she had grown a second head, Danika withdrew a handkerchief from her bag. “I think one of my bottles broke,” she said almost robotically. “I have a stuffed nose; could you smell this? I’m worried it’s the perfume.” 

Leah took a deep whiff. “Doesn’t smell like perfume,” she commented, blinking as the compartment seemed to double in brightness. She leaned back into her seat and slowly collapsed sideways. 

Danika plucked the handkerchief from her unresisting fingers. “I thought so too. That’s definitely chloroform.” 

Leah’s hands twitched. “You drugged me?” she slurred. 

“A little bit,” Danika admitted. “I don’t really like you.” 

The blonde’s cheerful grin was the last thing that Leah saw before darkness overtook her vision.


	2. Paris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just filling in a few of my headcanons for how the Supernatural mythology works together, introducing a few characters. Not exactly filler but not exactly explosive, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mossad - Israel's equivalent of the CIA, except you don't fuck with Mossad unless you want to have an accident. Basically the most badass and terrifying intelligence service in the world. 
> 
> Claymore- a directional explosive, you place it on the ground with a tripwire or trigger and it explodes in the direction you're pointing it. 
> 
> Swiss Guard- incredibly awesome guards that wear incredibly terrible uniforms, they guard the Vatican
> 
> Bast- Egyptian goddess with a cat's head
> 
> Additional note: there are actually several Devil's Gates around the world, not just one in North America

When Leah woke up, she was in a darkened room that lacked the swaying motion of the train. She fumbled her way out of the scratchy sheets; her left leg had fallen asleep and she tripped repeatedly as she jangled her way to the doorway, swearing all the while. 

The corridor was better lit and she followed the faint sound of laughter through to a kitchen. There was enough light to finally see herself; she was wearing her own clothes, but with a great deal of jewellery added; charms dangled at her ankles, wrists, and neck. When she peeled back her sleeves, Leah discovered that her arms had been covered in pentagrams and sigils, scrawled in what appeared to be permanent marker. She just sighed and looked around the kitchen. Several pots bubbling merrily away on the stove were revealed, upon closer inspection, to contain two stews and one bloody, eyeball-filled sludge. She recoiled instantly, dropping the ladle into the pot and the lid onto the floor. It hit with a loud clatter made louder by the sudden absence of noise from the next room. 

Leah picked up the lid and placed it delicately on the counter, turning to see that several armed and very unimpressed hunters had appeared in the kitchen. 

Danika strolled in and Leah almost didn’t recognise her with her hair out of her characteristic bun. What Leah had assumed was short dark hair with a white-blonde hair piece to hold it was in fact waist-length peroxide with several inches of black regrowth. “Yeah, that’s Leah.” There was a collective lowering of weapons. “Why don’t you come in and meet everybody?” 

“Are you going to drug me again?” Leah asked warily. 

Danika just chuckled and went back into the lounge room. 

One of the hunters gestured for her to go first and she did so, only to whirl back immediately. “Did you just splash me with water?” 

“Nope,” he replied, straight-faced. She looked down to his hand, in which was a flask. 

“Really?”

A hunter to her left put up his hand. “It was me, actually. Holy water.” 

Leah’s lips thinned. “Was there anything else you wanted to do while you were here?” 

All four of them nodded, each pulling several implements from their pockets. Leah looked from one to the other and saw they were serious, so she sighed and put her arms out. 

After pressing salt, silver, iron, bronze and holy water against her skin, they let her go with unashamed grins. 

Stepping forward into the windowless lounge room Leah was confronted with the same wary stares that met her in the kitchen. Two dozen hunters were sprawled across the couches, benches and chairs that clustered around various card-covered tables. They all wore dark, worn clothing and seemed to be divided between ancient, grizzled men and young men in their twenties. There were significantly less young hunters than old. 

Janna, Danika and a number of others were crowded around a table in the corner; they didn’t look up.

“She’s clean,” called somebody behind her. The stares immediately relaxed into friendly smiles and everybody’s hands simultaneously moved away from what Leah realised were concealed weapons. 

“You’re Janna’s granddaughter?” asked a man sprawled across an armchair. 

“Yeah.”

He inclined his head towards his table. “Texas Holdem. Care to join?”

Leah was saved from answering by Janna’s call. She smiled awkwardly and quickly went to her grandmother, dodging furniture along the way. 

“Grandma?”

“Suffering any ill effects?” the woman asked briefly, not looking up from the papers she was marking with an ancient pencil. 

“No, I’m fine,” she replied easily, shooting Danika a nasty glare. The girl just grinned at her, clearly much more comfortable here than in London. “I take it we’re in Paris?” 

“Only in the loosest sense of ‘Paris’ would the answer be yes,” a hunter to her left remarked. 

“So we are where, exactly?” 

“Seventeen miles south of Paris,” Danika told her. “We’re in a safe house in the Forêt Domaniale d'Armainvilliers.”

Leah frowned. “The national forest of Armainvilliers?”

“Correct,” Danika said cheerfully. “It’s relatively isolated, so casualties should be limited.”

“So now we wait here until the demons go away?” 

Leah had asked the question a tad too loudly and there was a moment of silence before the room exploded with laughter. 

Danika patted her on the arm, sniggering. “You’re cute, you really are.” Leah scowled and slapped her hand away. 

“Now we wait until they come to us,” Janna corrected gently, though a smirk lingered on her face. “This place isn’t immune to scrying and we’re betting that word will travel fast.” 

“Right.” Leah looked down at the maps and plans and then up at the smirking hunters around her. “I’ll just go back to my room then,” she said sullenly. 

“No, you won’t,” Janna told her. “You need some basic training on the supernatural.” Danika nodded in enthusiastic agreement. “Danika, train her.” 

The girl looked up in surprise. “What?” 

“You heard me. Basic lore, how to hold a gun, some self defence. As much as you can cram in while we’re stuck here.” 

Danika’s expression went stormy but she nodded nonetheless. “Come on, pommy girl.” She started toward a different door but stopped when she saw that Leah hadn’t moved. “Well?”

“Could you maybe stop treating me like luggage?” Leah demanded of Janna. 

The woman calmly looked up from the table. “That will be much easier to do when you have a skill set surpassing that of luggage.” 

Leah scowled at that. “I came up with the iPod idea, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did,” Janna agreed. “But you also picked a fight with Danika and sassed me in London, so on balance you’re still luggage.” 

She huffed and stomped out, only to have her dramatic exit ruined when Danika followed her and yanked her back through the correct doorway. 

Danika dragged her into a large room with a bed in one corner, a large table in another and several bookshelves along the walls. She paused to close the door behind them and Leah took the opportunity to seize a pillow from the bed and scream into it. 

When she was finished, she put the pillow back. 

“Feel better?” Danika asked idly. 

“Yes, actually.” 

“Good.” Danika pulled a blue folder from a bookshelf. She opened it and flicked through, absently nodding towards the table. “Take a seat.” 

Leah did so, glancing curiously at the many old books that were scattered across it. 

“We’re going to start with the basics,” Danika said briefly, dumping the blue folder on the desk. She unfolded a broad sheet of paper and spread it across the table. It was covered in dense text and beautiful illustrations and was divided into sections, five of which were arranged around the centre in a pentagon. 

“Firstly the state of affairs,” she began, gesturing vaguely at the paper. “Hell, Heaven and Purgatory exist, all arranged around the Earth. Meeting in the middle, there are humans, angels, demons, monsters, wished creatures and spirits.” 

“Angels exist?” Leah asked hopefully. “They could heal my mother, right?” 

“This will go faster if you don’t interrupt,” Danika told her sharply. She sat back sheepishly and the other girl continued, gesturing towards the top section. “Angels haven’t been seen on Earth for quite some time now, but they scare demons shitless so we reckon they’re just hanging back in Heaven. Not much is known about them, but common points in lore seem to suggest that they can teleport, heal both themselves and others instantly, and smite the hell out of whatever they want. With me so far?” 

Leah nodded. 

“Good.” Danika pointed to the next section. “Demons. Human souls warped by Hell into creatures that desire only death and destruction. They’re quite protective of their own lives, though, and will usually do any kind of deal to save their own skin. That said, they’re tricky bastards and will use any loophole to get out of whatever deal they make. They can possess people and objects, are very strong and fast, have some telekinetic and telepathic powers and heal very quickly. They don’t need food, drink or sleep. Their blood is said to enhance psychic power. They leave traces of sulphur and generate electromagnetic interference. Vulnerable to holy water, salt, iron, exorcisms and particular symbols.” 

“How do you make holy water?” Leah asked curiously. 

Danika cocked an eyebrow. “You take water and make it holy by blessing it.” 

“So you just say some words over water and suddenly you have demon acid?” she asked sceptically. 

“You put a rosary in the water to seal the spell,” Danika added. “But otherwise yes.” 

Leah nodded thoughtfully. “Interesting. I’ll have to remember that.” 

“Right.” After a confused glance, the other girl pointed to the next section. “Monsters; that is, vampires, werewolves, djinn, skinwalkers, shapeshifters, phoenixes, kitsune, et cetera. Every monster species has its alphas, which were the very first. The alphas were created by the Great Mother, Eve; last seen on Earth ten thousand years ago, when she created the alphas of the monsters we see now. Monsters turn humans, usually by sharing blood; once a human becomes a monster, there’s no going back. Usually a human soul is bound for Heaven, Hell or Limbo, but monsters go to Purgatory.”

“Sorry, where is Limbo?” Leah interrupted. 

“Earth, sort of,” replied Danika. “Humans that refuse to pass on, usually because they died violently, stay here in spirit form and manifest as ghosts, poltergeists, et cetera. Medieval hunters saw Limbo as a kind of shadow world overlaid on ours, so that when spirits are active on Earth they allow some of the shadow world through; hence the flickering lights, electromagnetic disruption, strange weather patterns and temperature changes. I don’t know how true that is, but I haven’t heard anything to discount it. Theoretically, powerful demons walk through both worlds and that’s why they cause a similar effect. Anyway, spirits gradually lose their humanity and become more violent and destructive as time goes on.” She tapped the ‘spirits’ section. “They’re easily dissipated by iron or salt, but the only way to kick them out of Limbo is to burn their bones. We don’t know what happens to them then, but they don’t come back.”

“So salt pretty much kills anything?” 

Danika brought her hand back to the ‘monsters’ section of the page. “Not monsters. Most are vulnerable to silver, some to bronze, but each species has a particular weakness. To kill vampires, you need to remove the head; for dragons, you need a blade forged with dragon blood. They’ll recover from just about any other injury, so getting the lore right is crucial.” 

Leah nodded thoughtfully. “So that’s what you guys do? Travel around and kill these things?”

“Yup,” she grinned. “Hunters are a strange breed. Most get introduced to the supernatural by the murder of their families, so they’re generally revenge-driven and work alone or in pairs. Janna’s been around for quite a while now though, so she’s run into just about everybody in the business at one time or another. That gathering out there,” she continued with a jerk of her head towards the lounge room, “is pretty much every hunter in Europe.”

“Wow,” Leah breathed. “They’re a bunch of well-armed drunks.” 

The smile slid from her face. “That too,” she acknowledged. “But mostly they’re good people who spend their lives trying to save the population from magical bad guys.” 

“They got here pretty quick,” Leah remarked. “Was there a convention in France or something?”

Danika’s mouth twitched as she tried to conceal a smirk. “We’ve been here for about a day now.”

“But I only just-“ Leah stopped and glared at the other girl. “Gran let you keep drugging me?” 

Danika shrugged casually, though she was clearly amused. “We needed time to set up the traps and protections we wanted.” 

Leah huffed. 

“Reconsidering that hunting thing you were thinking of doing?” 

She scowled at Danika with renewed force. 

“I’ll take that as a no,” she decided, unfazed. “In that case, you’ll probably want to get back to learning about what we hunt.” 

Leah nodded and switched her attention back to the table. “What are wished creatures?”

“The fun ones,” Danika answered cheerfully. “When people believe in something, they grant it power, and occasionally enough power swirls around one particular myth that it becomes manifest. The myth inherits the strengths and weaknesses that people believe it has. Once it has manifested, the creature remains in existence no matter how few people continue to believe, usually feeding on humans in a more literal sense. Included in this category are tulpas, gods, golems and arguably fairies.”

“Gods?” repeated Leah. 

Danika grinned. “Yeah, you know, like Thor or Zeus. They’re still walking around, as far as I know.”

“Wow,” she murmured. “Gods walk among us.” 

“Mostly they eat people or torture them for their own amusement,” Danika added casually. “I wouldn’t get too excited.” 

Leah blanched and the other girl sniggered. 

“Come on, we’d best get you kitted up,” Danika said after her horrified expression had waned. 

Leah hesitated, glancing back at the beautifully illustrated diagram. “Do I get to keep this?”

“What? You’re kidding, right?” 

She stared wistfully at it nonetheless. “But it’s so pretty.” 

“It’s three hundred years old,” Danika told her. “Do you even know how much effort getting it was?” 

Leah just ran a hand over the vellum. Danika sighed and dragged her out of her seat. 

“Come on, I’ve got to teach you how to hold a gun yet.” 

“What’s the point of a gun? Demons are fine with bullets, right?”

“Well, it’s good to know that you were listening,” she remarked, successfully pulling her away from the diagram. “But it’s important to remember that nothing likes being shot in the face; the seconds it takes to heal could save your life. That said, we use shotguns with salt rounds. Painful but not deadly, even to humans.”

Leah sighed and allowed herself to be pulled to the door. 

“Where did you get that thing from anyway?” 

Danika grinned. “We stole it, of course. The Swiss Guard isn’t what it used to be.” 

“What?” demanded Leah, stopping in the doorway. “You stole it from the Vatican?” 

“We were reviewing the protections on the Gate in the catacombs last year,” she explained, tugging Leah though. “They’ve got all sorts of interesting stuff down there, so we took some. Made a number of things a hell of a lot clearer, I can tell you that.”

Leah looked at her quizzically and she continued, “Before we had those documents, we pretty much just worked off legends and rumours, and many of those were lost by war and disease. Now we’ve got proper lore to work with as well as a better idea of how a lot of it works.” Danika pushed her into a booth at what Leah saw was a firing range and then went to the weapon rack on the back wall. “Crossroad demons, for example, can grant just about any wish in exchange for a human soul.” 

She selected a number of guns and brought them over to the booth. “We always assumed this was just because they wanted to corrupt people, but one particular book we found suggested that human souls aren’t just bragging rights, they actually generate power. More souls in your possession, more power goes to you.”

Leah picked up a pistol curiously but Danika snatched it from her hands. “Basics first,” she told her, replacing it with a shotgun. “You’ve got to learn how to aim and maintain a weapon before you get anywhere near one of those. Anyway, humans don’t really get to harness the power of their own souls, but human belief does direct some of that energy towards the belief.” 

“So wished creatures exist because people’s souls power them?” Leah clarified. 

Danika nodded and showed her how to load the weapon before cocking it with practised ease. “The old mythologies have fallen by the wayside, but the creatures don’t cease to exist just because people stop believing. They just lose most of their power, become little more than monsters.” 

“Does that mean that God is a wished creature?” 

Danika grinned and uncocked the shotgun before unloading it again. “That is an interesting theological question. Load this.” 

Leah obediently took the gun, but nearly dropped it. “This thing is heavy!” Danika just raised her eyebrows expectantly and she dutifully loaded the weapon. “What does ‘interesting theological question’ mean?” 

“It means that we don’t know,” Danika said with a grin. “Would it make a difference?”

“Billions of people, all believing in a creature that exists beyond space and time with both the capacity and desire to create the universe…” Leah trailed off. “It would make sense.” 

Danika just shrugged and passed her a pair of ear buds. “Not really my bag. Keep the gun pointed away from me, would you?”

“What are these for?” Leah asked, but Danika was putting some in her own ears so she followed suit. 

The other girl then stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Leah, positioning her hands correctly on the shotgun. Her fingers skimmed down Leah’s jeans to correct her stance before she stepped back slightly. Danika’s breath was warm on Leah’s neck when she spoke. “See that target?” Leah nodded. “Shoot it.” 

She frowned and looked over at Danika, but the girl only moved to the side of the booth and stared at her expectantly. Leah fired.

Several things happened: the shotgun discharged with a loud bang, a spot two feet from the target became pocked with buckshot and Leah fell over. Danika burst out laughing and Janna burst in through the door. The woman quickly assessed the situation but just smiled and went back outside. 

“I think I just dislocated my shoulder,” Leah complained.

Danika helped her up, still sniggering. “I did position your legs so that you wouldn’t do that. Were you expecting that sheer force of will would protect you from the recoil?” 

“I didn’t expect it to be that much,” Leah admitted. “It looks really easy on TV.” 

With a significant amount of effort Danika prevented herself from laughing more, though a small smile still escaped her control. 

“How am I supposed to be doing it then?” Leah snapped, noticing her smirk. 

Danika just smiled. “Stand like I showed you but actually brace yourself this time.”

Leah did so, wrinkling her nose at the other girl when Danika poked her arms and legs to correct her stance. 

“I didn’t expect it to be this loud either,” she admitted when she had fired another shot. 

“I wouldn’t recommend putting your ear next to the barrel of a gun unless you’re up for premature deafness,” Danika agreed, leaning over to examine the target. “Take a look at the wall here and tell me what you see.”

Leah leaned forward as well. The round had spread itself across an area the size of a basketball, with the closest fragment still several inches from the edge of the target. “I’m a terrible shot?” 

“I was thinking more along the lines of picturing what that would do to a human torso,” Danika commented. 

Leah instantly recoiled. “Why the hell would I want to do that?”

“I want you to understand exactly what you’re holding,” she said, completely serious for the first time that Leah had ever seen her. “That’s fifteen yards away but it could still kill somebody. Never use it at that distance or closer unless you’re trying to kill.” Leah nodded numbly. “In fact, I would recommend never using metal rounds at all.”

Danika gauged her reaction, and when she deemed her appropriately horrified, she took the shotgun from her unresisting fingers and replaced it with a sawed-off. “This one’s got salt rounds and as you can see, there’s a lot less barrel. That means much less precision, a wider dispersal. The salt rounds are also lighter than the buckshot, so they have a lot less kick.” 

Leah hesitantly accepted the weapon. “So this one doesn’t kill people?”

“It will,” Danika assured her, a smile quirking the corner of her lips. “But only if you put it up close.”

She glanced up at the target and then down at the weapon. 

“The same can be said for tweezers, plastic bags and guava juice,” Danika remarked thoughtfully, “so I wouldn’t get too freaked out.” 

Leah turned away but not before Danika caught her smile. 

“Come on, just fire the damn thing.”

She obediently raised the gun, pausing to adjust her stance when she saw Danika’s expectant smirk. After the resultant bang, they both leaned forward to examine the grouping. 

This time the shot had hit the target; salt had hit everything in a two meter diameter. Danika took the gun from her hands again and put it down on the bench before ducking out of the booth to walk through the range. Leah frowned, but Danika just waved her hand impatiently so she followed her in. 

Danika was at the wall when she entered, skimming her fingers over the dents in the wall. “Come look at these,” she called. Leah went over and touched one of the dents; salt was still embedded in the wall. 

“This looks like it could still do some damage,” Leah said uneasily. 

Danika put her finger against an unblemished section and slowly pushed it, creating a new dent. “That shot might break the skin but it’s more likely to just leave a welt. Unless you shoot a baby or something.” She paused and looked suspiciously at Leah. “You’re not planning on shooting babies, are you?”

“No!”

“Well alright then,” she murmured, though she still glanced at her curiously. “What if you have to shoot a baby?” 

Leah stared at her, incredulous. “In what situation would I have to shoot a baby?”

Danika shrugged. “I’ve been in all sorts of weird situations. You never know with hunting.” 

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” Leah said flatly. 

Danika slapped the wall and grinned when Leah jumped. “Me neither. You hungry?” The other girl just stared at her. “I’m hungry.” 

She nodded decisively and strolled back to their booth. Leah followed, seriously considering the possibility that Danika was bipolar. She wasn’t any less confused when Danika turned and gifted her with both weapons and a bucket of cleaning equipment. 

“What are these for?”

“You used them,” Danika told her cheerfully. “Now you clean them.” 

“I don’t even know how to clean a gun, let alone two,” Leah objected. 

“Then you learn,” she replied easily. She clapped her on the shoulder and nodded in mock earnest. “I have faith in you.” 

Leah just raised her eyebrows, supremely unimpressed. 

“Come on, let’s get some food.” Danika set off through to the lounge room, where about half of the hunters had disappeared. The others were playing poker or eating. “Dieter does great stew.”

“Not the one with eyes in it?” Leah asked suspiciously. 

Danika snorted. “No, that’s in case we get hellhounds. Dump the guns here, Yosef will teach you how to clean them.” She pointed to a grizzled, olive-skinned man who was in the line to the kitchen. “Ask him about his foot,” she whispered conspiratorially. 

They each grabbed bowls and joined the line. When they had acquired stew from the delightfully friendly Dieter, they sat back down at Yosef’s table. 

“Danika said that you were going to teach me to clean this?” Leah suggested, picking up the sawed-off shotgun. She went around the table to pass it to him but tripped on Danika’s foot and slammed into the table instead. The shotgun, which was pointed at Yosef’s face, slammed into the table as well, sending his plate flying into the air. Leah watched in horror as the gun discharged, sending salt rounds down both barrels towards Yosef, who merely quirked an eyebrow. His plate fell food-first to the table and happened to be in between his face and the gun; the shot hit it and sent it flying up and back. Yosef caught it with ease and lowered it to the table. 

“Oh my God, I am so sorry,” Leah gasped. “I didn’t realise it was loaded, I am so, so, so sorry!”

He waved her apologies away, not even looking at her. Yosef cocked an eyebrow at Danika. “A shotgun, really?”

She grinned. “Can you blame me?”

“What?” demanded Leah. “You orchestrated this?”

Yosef took a delicate bite of his meal. “At least it’s well seasoned,” he commented. “And a shotgun is better than what you used last time.”

“What did she use last time?” Leah asked, calming down when she realised that none of the other hunters seemed even the slightest bit concerned. She sat down in her seat properly and took a sip of water. 

“A claymore,” he replied casually. 

Leah choked on the water. “What?” she asked in a strangled voice. 

“Six of them, actually,” Danika corrected. 

“The others didn’t go off,” Yosef pointed out. 

She grinned. “The only reason that one went off was because you punched it.”

“You punched a claymore?” Leah asked incredulously. 

“Close your mouth,” Danika said absently. “You look like a goldfish.” 

“It fired away from me,” explained Yosef. 

“Danika must have put it in wrong,” Leah decided. 

Danika frowned at that but Yosef just grinned. “No, no, I kept the front plate as a souvenir. My fist is imprinted right across ‘this side towards enemy.’”

“So why would it go off wrong?” Leah asked. 

Yosef raised his chin proudly and gestured expansively with his hands. “I’m Jesus.”

“He’s not Jesus,” Danika assured her. “He’s just lucky.”

“Like Jesus,” Yosef stage-whispered. Leah had to giggle at the intense stare that accompanied the whisper.

Danika rolled her eyes. “It’s a game we all play, trying to kill him.”

A pair of young hunters joined the table, digging into their stews with relish. “It’s true,” said one around his spoon. “You can’t call yourself a hunter if you haven’t tried to kill Yosef at least once.”

“All in good fun,” Yosef told Leah, who was looking rather alarmed. “It would take quite a lot to kill me.” 

“He has a cursed object that makes him incredibly lucky,” Danika explained. 

Leah frowned. “How does a cursed object make him lucky?” 

“The instant I lose it, I’m going to die the most violent and painful death that this thing can concoct,” he told her, lifting his foot so that she could see it. “But until then, I’m the luckiest son of a bitch alive.”

“Your foot is cursed?” 

Yosef chuckled. “My foot is gone. What’s cursed is the kangaroo paw that’s in it.” He was wearing lace-up boots that went to mid-calf, but when he rapped his knuckles on his ankle it clanked. 

“If you’re so lucky, how did you lose a foot?” Leah asked curiously. 

One of the hunters threw his hands dramatically in the air. “Not the foot story again!”

The other put his hand to his forehead and collapsed back into his chair. “I can’t handle another round!”

“Oh, stop being such drama queens,” Danika scolded, though she looked like she wanted to stage a faint herself. “It’s a good story.” 

“Yes, Danika,” they chorused. 

She grinned and picked up her bowl. “I’m going to go talk to Svern and Terje about getting you some proper lessons in lore. Yosef?”

“Yes?”

“Tell her the roo foot story as well, it’s a good laugh.” She paused and glanced at Leah. “Keep away from talking about her mother,” Danika added in rapid French, “But make sure she learns how to clean the weapons properly. I don’t expect she’ll be around long, just teach her enough to make sure she doesn’t accidentally kill anybody.” 

Yosef and the other two hunters nodded in understanding and Danika wandered back over to the kitchen. 

“What did she say just then?” Leah asked curiously. “I didn’t catch it.” 

“Just reminding us to teach you proper gun safety,” one hunter said with a forced smile. “I’m Pierre,” he added, sticking out a hand. 

“And I’m Stefan,” supplied the second, sticking his hand out as well.

Leah shook both hands at once, which earned her genuine grins from the pair. They were oddly matched, Stefan a lily-white blonde with dark eyes and a South African accent, and Pierre an ebony-skinned, blue eyed Frenchman. Both were in their early twenties by the look of them, lacking the grimness that lurked about the other hunters. 

“We’re new at this too,” Stefan confided. 

Pierre snorted. “My family’s been doing this for fourteen generations now. I wouldn’t exactly call that new.”

“You only recently started hunting though,” Stefan pointed out. Pierre just shrugged. 

“When you say recently, what do you mean exactly?” asked Leah. 

“Three years?” Stefan guessed. 

Pierre nodded. “I had the lore before that, but we only started going on hunts three years ago.”

“So what, you two are a team?” 

“A damn good one too, if I do say so myself,” Pierre declared. 

Stefan nodded gravely. “We can’t both be wrong,” he agreed, “So it must be true.”

“You both think my foot story is boring, so clearly you can,” Yosef said pointedly. 

“We don’t think it’s boring,” Pierre assured him. “But if you told it sixteen times a day like you try to, it would become boring.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” Stefan told him seriously. “It would be tragic.”

Stefan, Leah was learning, was the master of the deadpan expression. 

“I would like to hear the foot story,” Leah declared. 

Yosef clapped his hands cheerfully. “Excellent.” He directed his penetrating stare at Pierre and Stefan. “Are you two staying?”

“Of course!” Stefan agreed. 

There was a thump that could only be Stefan hitting Pierre under the table, because a moment later the other man nodded as well. 

Yosef spread his arms wide. “Excellent. Now, in 1985 I was working with Mossad.” He noted Leah’s confusion and added, “That’s Israeli intelligence, dear. At the time, I had pissed off my immediate superior by sleeping with her daughter, so she sent me on what seemed like a wild goose chase to Australia. I was supposed to find another agent who had disappeared there on holiday, but there were no leads whatsoever so I decided to go on a holiday myself. For research purposes, naturally.”

“Naturally,” Stefan echoed. 

“Next thing I know, I’m in the middle of the Simpson Desert being pursued by some crazy immortal lady with a tattered bag around her neck. She’s shouting at me about how she is the great goddess Bast, how I need to bow before her magnificence; but to be honest, it’s the desert so we’re both sweaty, grimy and generally disgusting.”

“What did you do?” Leah asked, beginning to enjoy the man’s grandiose style of storytelling. 

“I did not bow,” he said proudly. A lecherous grin spread across his face. “I did, however, kneel. Repeatedly.”

Pierre sniggered. “The things you do for your country,” Stefan said dryly. “Your patriotism is an example to us all.”

“Yes, it is,” Yosef agreed. “Anyway, after our really quite enjoyable interlude back in her tent, I remembered that she was planning to kill me and make the tactical decision to run like the wind.”

“Probably a wise decision,” Pierre remarked. 

“Now, I have a little tradition that when I sleep with a woman, I keep a souvenir,” Yosef continued. “The problem in this particular case being that I didn’t want to bring a pillow or the tent with me all the way back to the car. The obvious solution was to take something of hers, but she wasn’t wearing any jewellery except for that ratty bag around her neck.”

“You have a remarkable gift for making this story sound reasonable,” Leah commented. 

He put his hands up defensively. “To be fair, I had run out of water the day before. I went through my week’s supply of tequila before running into Bast, and I was still drunk when I woke up.” 

Pierre snorted. “That’s his way of saying that he’s been drunk since in an attempt to never actually think about what happened next.”

“Hey,” Yosef objected, waving his beer. He stopped and looked at his hand. 

“You kind of just proved his point there,” Stefan pointed out. 

“Possibly,” Yosef admitted. “It was pretty traumatic.”

“So tell us what happened,” urged Leah. 

Yosef sighed. “I took the ratty bag, obviously, completely unaware that it was an extremely powerful cursed object. One Bast fashioned for herself, I suspect, because by that point it wasn’t a proper kangaroo paw, just a bag of bones. Anyway, I take the bag and run like hell, but she follows me and she’s only a few steps behind when she’s attacked by a bunch of scorpions that- and I’m not exaggerating here- attach themselves to her face and sting her until her face is bright red and the size of a beach ball.

“She tears them off and her face shrinks back, but she’s unbelievably pissed now, and she’s shouting at me in some weird language. I look back and she’s summoning this sandstorm around her, wind throwing sand into my face, and my visibility goes to complete shit. I thought I was going to die, but I’m holding onto this ratty bag because I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to have a souvenir if I survived, but the wind and the sand are practically clawing the skin off my bones so I just crouch and wait for it to blow over. The wind dissipated a bit and I looked up to see Bast, spitting mad and shrieking with fury, holding out a hand with fingernails all grown out. I thought I was hallucinating at the time, but she had a cat’s head on her shoulders instead of a human head and she was literally hissing at me. She reaches down and I realise she’s going for the bag, so I throw it over her head, kick her in the shins and then sprint after it, and this is where things get really weird.”

“How could things get weirder than that,” asked Leah incredulously. 

Yosef grinned. “You’d be surprised. Anyway, I’m sprinting for the bag, neck in neck with Bast, and we both leap for it at the same time. With my fingers literally an inch from the bag, I watched this man in a suit appear in front of me and smile, but then I grabbed it and he disappeared. I’m practically shitting myself, and may actually have done if I hadn’t only ingested tequila in the last day and a half, but instead I get a faceful of dirt as I hit the ground. Bast tackled me but I pushed her off and we got into a bit of a slap fight until I came to my senses and kicked her in the gut. I stumbled backwards and see the smiling suit man right beside me, waving at her right before this enormous bomb just drops out of the sky and squishes her flat.

“I ducked, obviously, but after several minutes of praying to every god except Bast, I realised I wasn’t dead and looked up to see the suited man holding up a cat’s head. He put it in a briefcase and waved- and it wasn’t a goodbye wave, it was an ‘I’ll see you soon’ wave- and then disappeared again. I’m confused as all hell, naturally, and a closer look at the bomb revealed radioactive symbols so I work out I’m standing about five feet from an unexploded nuclear warhead. I decide that I’d better get the hell out of there so I start wandering through the desert and after ten minutes I realise that I have no idea where my car is but fortunately I get picked up by a pair of very flexible Swedish women on holiday.” 

“She got squashed by a nuclear bomb,” Leah repeated. 

“Yup,” Yosef grinned. “I’d say it was luckiest moment of my life but that’s still reserved for Sierra Leone. Anyway, long story short, I spent a fun few days travelling back to the city and then I got a commendation for acquiring nuclear technology that Israel lacked at the time. It wasn’t until I ran into a witch-doctor in Morocco that I even knew that the bag was actually a magical object.” 

“What is it, exactly?”

“A kangaroo paw,” he told her. “Ancient, too, nothing but bones now.” 

“What is so magical about kangaroos?” she asked curiously. 

Yosef chuckled. “The European equivalent would be a rabbit’s foot. There are special preparations involved, obviously, but it is still essentially just a foot.” 

“So why don’t you all have kangaroo paws?” Leah asked, glancing at Pierre and Stefan. 

Pierre grinned. “Because you’ve got to be completely mad to want one. Yosef only got his by accident and he only keeps it because he’s had it for so long that he’d be killed in the minute the ritual to destroy it takes.”

“The longer you keep a cursed object, the stronger the curse kicks in when it does,” Stefan explained. “And this particular cursed object is lucky in every capacity except keeping the foot.”

Leah nodded thoughtfully and noticed that perhaps a dozen hunters were left in the room. “Where has everybody gone?” 

“Getting some sleep or heading up to the main building,” Stefan told her. “We’re taking shifts.”

“It’s funny, because we expected them to have attacked already,” Pierre remarked. “Janna made some calls and the Gate got opened nearly three days ago now.” 

“Is it really safe to sleep?” Leah asked, glancing around nervously. 

Pierre smiled. “We’re in the inner section. It’s completely protected, covered in demon warding and trapping sigils. This whole section’s ringed with six tons of salt buried fifteen feet underground; nothing’s getting in.” 

“Why not ring the whole thing in salt?” 

“Sometimes we need to be able to talk to demons,” Stefan said quietly. 

Leah frowned. “Why would you want to-“ she cut herself off when she saw Pierre’s meaningful look. “Oh. So this is Guantanamo for demons, huh?” 

“Only sometimes,” Pierre added quickly. “We don’t exactly make a habit of it.” 

“We might have to give you a live demonstration,” Yosef commented. “If they’re hanging back it’s because they’re busy doing something else and we definitely need to know what that is.”

“Demons couldn’t organise their way out of a paper bag,” Pierre scoffed. 

“They organised their way through the protections on the US Gate,” Yosef retorted. “Somebody high up is calling the shots, which means they might actually coordinate a proper offense.” 

“Even if they got organised, it’s not like they’re going to do much more than hit and runs,” Stefan argued. “Demons are barely capable of using knives, let alone tactical assault weapons.”

“All it takes is one demon accidentally possessing a gun nut or a soldier for them to realise that there are ways to attack that don’t involve risking their own skins,” Yosed warned.

Pierre rolled his eyes. “Any demon of significant power sends off enough EMF to mess up whatever electronics they might even consider using. The lower-ranked ones are barely bright enough to escape the Pit, let alone learn to use complex weaponry or military tactics.”

This was sounding to Leah like a long-running argument that she wasn’t particularly interested in joining. She hefted the shotgun and looked around expectantly. “You guys going to help me clean these or what?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In 1985, Australia was conducting nuclear tests in the Simpson Desert- true facts
> 
> Next chapter - The Calm - hopefully here next tuesday.


	3. The Calm

Chapter 3

 

Over the next three days Leah alternated between hunters as they collectively taught her some of the basic skills and knowledge that hunters required. 

Svern taught her what he referred to as the ‘alternate history;’ that is, the history of the world as influenced by the supernatural beings that filled it. He was a friendly, excitable Swede with a philosophical bent and they enjoyed many debates, most of which he won due to his incredible store of knowledge and habit of distracting her with interesting, irrelevant facts. Arguing against the existence of a soul is rather difficult when you’re confronted with somebody who has watched them being extracted and keeps talking about the weather patterns of Aruba; she enjoyed herself immensely nonetheless. 

Danika just rolled her eyes when Leah mentioned it but Janna at least seemed moderately interested, though she was quick to point out that real-life experience trumped theory every time. Svern conducted most of their lessons in the kitchen, flipping enthusiastically through ancient tomes as Leah peeled potatoes. Terje interjected with a quiet clarification occasionally, but mostly he sliced vegetables and smiled indulgently at Svern when he became overly excited. 

Terje was an elderly blonde almost identical to Svern, though he explained that they were not related. It was with him that Leah learned the different sigils, traps and warding symbols that they had surrounded the base with, as well as many others she needed to be able to recognise. He was gently-spoken and encouraging but worked her harder than any of the others, making her draw pentagrams and sigils of different sizes until her hands cramped. It wasn’t until he woke her in the middle of the night and bade her put a devil’s trap on the ceiling that she found the training had paid off; Leah drew it in eight seconds flat, hands seemingly moving by themselves, and was still blinking sleep from her eyes when she finished. He kissed her on the forehead and let her get back to sleep, but greeted her the next morning with a cake. 

Pierre and Stefan eventually taught her to clean the guns she used, and after that she was cleaning everybody else’s as well. “For training,” they assured her. They didn’t let her fire one until she had spent two days cleaning every weapon they thrust at her; when she asked why, Stefan grinned sheepishly and Pierre explained, “When Danika let you shoot the sawed-off, it was pretty much just to scare you. If you end up on the battlefield, your first priority should be to run or to hide, not to pick up a weapon. You don’t have the training.”

Leah just gave the rifle she was holding a final wipe-over with the cloth. “Yet.”

The pair grinned at one another and finally took her to the range. It was, she discovered, much larger than she had realised; the wall slid back another fifty yards on rails in the floor, also revealing the supply closets carved into the sides of the room. “We store the extra ammunition and heavy-duty stuff here,” Stefan explained. Leah had by then discovered that much of the base was underground, so the extra space became that much more impressive. 

Pierre handed her a pistol. “Show me how you stand,” he ordered. 

She complied, moving into the stance Danika had shown her three days earlier. 

Stefan sniggered. 

“What?” Leah demanded. 

“Sorry,” he grinned, “You just look so damned cute standing there like you know what you’re doing.” 

Leah turned to Pierre in frustration. “Are all hunters this patronising?”

“Pretty much,” he replied, unfazed. 

She huffed and fired, only to yelp and stumble backwards as the pistol recoiled and smacked her between the eyes. Leah swapped the gun to her left hand and gingerly felt her forehead with her right. 

Stefan and Pierre had clustered curiously around her, both of them wearing expressions equally balanced between amusement and concern. 

“Let us see,” Stefan said encouragingly. 

Leah tentatively pulled her hand away and both of them broke into laughter. 

“Oh, that is definitely going to bruise,” Pierre declared. 

She glared at them and put her hand back. “Would you at least get me some ice or something?”

They took her down to the freezer room on the lowest level, which was packed with meat and frozen bread. While she stared at the masses of food, Pierre took some ice cubes from a shelf and Stefan wrapped them in a dishtowel. He placed it carefully in her hands and they ushered her out of the freezer room, closing the door securely behind them. The pair had moved with a synchronisation that bordered on comical, wordlessly delegating tasks and seamlessly anticipating the other’s movements. For the first time Leah got an idea of what they would be like in combat, and she was extremely impressed. 

“Thanks,” she said gratefully, pressing it to her forehead and pulling herself up to sit on the table. Leah looked from one to the other. “You guys spend pretty much all your time together, yeah?”

They shared a glance and nodded cautiously. 

“How do you keep from wanting to tear each other’s heads off?” 

“We do bicker constantly,” Stefan pointed out. 

Pierre made a face. “Stefan never goes to a restaurant without at least two different kinds of cheese on the menu.”

“Pierre washes his hair twice a day,” Stefan retorted. “And he always carries a comb.” 

Pierre shook his hair out and then smoothed it casually with his hand. “You can’t deny that the end result is a sexy beast.” Stefan just raised an eyebrow and Pierre added pointedly, “Certainly a better result than your smelly cheeses.”

Stefan scowled and turned back to Leah. “Do you see what I put up with? He is insufferable.”

“So how do you suffer him?” Leah asked. “I try talking to grandma but she’s busy, and Danika just treats me like a child!” 

“This is not the first time you have mentioned this problem,” Stefan noted. 

“Perhaps the solution is to stop complaining like a child?” suggested Pierre. 

Leah frowned. “I don’t complain- oh god, I’m whining.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m whining, aren’t I?”

Pierre and Stefan nodded wordlessly. 

“I don’t know how you guys can stand the crappy beds and the cold showers and the spiders everywhere?!” She looked desperately from one to the other. “They laid eggs in my toothpaste!” she added, almost screeching. “I’m only just out of school, I can’t do this!” 

“Nobody expects you to, not really,” Pierre told her soothingly. “Stop acting like a tough guy and admit that you’re not up to it.”

“A little humility never killed anybody,” Stefan added encouragingly. 

“But then they’ll really think I’m pathetic,” she wailed. 

Pierre patted her on the shoulder. “I hate to break it to you,” he said quietly. “But they already do.” He exchanged a glance with Stefan and barely kept the smirk off his face. 

“You’re enjoying this,” Leah said sullenly. 

“This is true,” Stefan admitted. “But mostly we’re glad that you got to this stage before tomorrow.”

Leah frowned and looked up. “What was going to happen tomorrow?” The whine in her voice was disappearing, Pierre noted with relief. 

“We took a vote,” he explained, “And it was decided that if you didn’t stop being such a bitch, Danika had permission to do your hand-to-hand combat training.” 

At Leah’s look of confusion, Stefan added, “She’s been forbidden from training with anybody except Yosef because of the, ah, health issues that result.” 

Leah shrunk back with distaste. “She would have beaten the tar out of you,” Pierre clarified. 

“Yes, I got that, thanks Pierre,” she replied tartly. 

“Just wanted to be sure you understood,” he said airily. 

Leah turned to Stefan. “Is she really that good? She can’t be more than twenty-five.”

He just shrugged. “It’s not really my story to tell, but from what I’ve heard Janna picked her up when she was fourteen. After that it was a vengeance-fuelled killing spree for a couple of years and then she settled down to hunting when she was seventeen.”

“Killing spree?” Leah asked, bemused.

“The only reason we know is that my uncle knew some people who knew some people in the Ukrainian mafiya,” Pierre explained. “For whatever reason, Danika went after them, particularly the guys that ran the prostitution and drug trafficking end of the business.”

“And?” Leah prompted expectantly. 

“And once she had ticked off all the names she wanted, she apparently dropped in to visit the Godfather.” Stefan told her. 

“She killed him?” she breathed, becoming rather involved with the story. Apparently Danika’s life story would fill a number of slasher and action films. 

“She just talked,” Pierre corrected. “She agreed to leave them alone if they agreed not to try to go after her.” 

“Why would they agree to something like that?” Leah asked. 

“Probably had something to do with the way she had killed every hit squad they sent after her,” Pierre remarked laconically. 

Leah nodded thoughtfully. “Fair enough.” She lifted the ice pack away from her face and prodded delicately at the bruise on her forehead. “I don’t think I need the ice anymore.” 

They returned the pack to the freezer and went back upstairs for lunch. 

In a motion that entirely escaped Leah’s notice, Janna spotted her bruise and exchanged a glance with Danika, who then took Stefan aside for a quiet chat. When they returned to the firing range, there was a number of elbow and knee pads as well as a helmet in the pile of equipment for Leah to use. 

Leah opened her mouth to complain but noticed Stefan’s significant glance at Danika, who was leaning against the doorframe, and thought better of it. Once she had been covered in the ridiculous padding, Danika nodded approvingly and wandered off to do whatever she did all day. 

When she was gone, Leah looked to Stefan. “I’m off the list for training with Danika now?” 

“I would hope so,” he murmured. “She might suggest it anyway, but Janna wouldn’t approve of her forcing it on you.” 

Pierre placed the pistol in her hands for the second time. “Try not to smack yourself with it,” he suggested. 

She smacked him on the arm and positioned herself to shoot. “Shut up, frog boy.” 

After a significant amount of time was passed trading insults and advice, Yosef made his entrance. 

It was, in true Yosef style, an entrance with a bang. 

Leah was starting to get within bullseye range, and she fired only to watch as the target was demolished in a burst of liquid copper and flame. All three of them turned to stare at him incredulously, but he just lifted the RPG off his shoulder and grinned at them. 

“What?” 

Pierre and Stefan shook their heads in amusement. 

“If I don’t shoot something at least twice a year, my hands get all shaky like this,” Yosef told Leah, making his hands quiver dramatically. Her eyebrows shot to her hairline. 

Yosef dumped the launcher on a table and strolled over to the booth. “Well, are you going to show me what you can do?” 

“You just destroyed the target,” she told him. 

He gestured broadly at the other booths, swivelling his hips like a TV presenter. “There is always more than one option, my dear. Come, show me what you have learned.” 

Leah rolled her eyes and trailed behind Pierre and Stefan as they moved the equipment to the next booth along. 

“They are not letting you come to harm, I hope,” Yosef murmured quietly into her ear. “That is rather a large bruise on your forehead.” 

Leah’s hand shot unconsciously to her head. “Does it look that bad?”

“Only painful, my dear,” he reassured her. “But still, you are well? Young men can be rowdy, I know this to be true.” 

“Oh, it’s fine,” Leah told him. “They’re being really quite nice, all things considered.” 

“Not taking advantage, I hope,” he added, passing her a new clip. 

She frowned. “What do you mean?” 

Yosef just shook his head and waved for her to shoot, which she did. 

After she had fired off an entire clip, they all leaned in to examine her grouping. 

“You’re not exactly in my league,” Yosef commented, passing her a second clip, “But if your back’s against the wall you should be able to hold off a couple until we can get there.”

“That’s kind of disappointing,” Lean replied, squinting down the barrel of the pistol and hitting within the second ring of the target. 

“You’ve only been at this for three days,” he pointed out. “And none of it in a real combat situation. If something arises, I fully expect you to go hide in a corner and I will be extremely disappointed in you if you do not.” 

Several other hunters had drifted into the range and were leaning against the sides of the booth, peering over her head to stare at the target as well. 

“Surely there’s something I could do,” Leah protested. 

A hunter to her left took the hint and jumped in with some suggestions, after which the others followed suit. 

When Stefan and Pierre grew irritated with the gunfire and general tetchiness of Leah when faced with a dozen different advisors, they passed her on to Svern and Terje, who continued her education in obscure hunter lore. To their amusement and Leah’s frustration, the panel of self-appointed experts followed. They followed her for the rest of the day and all of the next, playing poker or canasta loudly in the background when she was performing tedious tasks and interrupting Svern with anecdotes when she was being lectured. 

Some of them were just bored, she suspected, as more and more of the younger hunters offered their own advice and experiences as the hours passed. The older ones, by contrast, grew increasingly anxious. More gathered around Janna at shift changeover to quietly ask questions; they clustered together at mealtimes and spoke in small, earnest circles. Janna, who Leah was realising was in charge of the rag-tag group, spent all her time at the desk in the side room. Nobody disturbed her as she made calls, carefully marking names off enormous lists, and occasionally taking notes, until on their sixth day at the base she entered the lounge room and everybody went quiet. In her hand was a single piece of paper covered in tiny, spidery handwriting. 

“The time has come to make a decision,” she announced in a clear voice. “I have confirmed that the Wyoming Gate was opened and then shut on the same day.”

Nobody spoke, but Leah shifted in her chair. She wasn’t sure that she was supposed to be included in this discussion. Danika nudged her with her elbow and she went still. 

“I have confirmed that several hundred demons were released on that day. There has, however, been no spike in either reported demon activity or demonic omens,” Janna continued. “Furthermore, Cardinal Sforza and several of his ilk fear an attack on the Vatican Gate, which would be catastrophic.” Every head in the room nodded grimly at that. Janna sucked in a deep breath. “The Cardinal is suggesting that the hellhound Cerberus be released to capture the wayward demons.” 

The rapturous silence which had filled the room completely evaporated at that statement as nearly every hunter leap to their feet to protest. Ignoring the cacophony, Danika leaned in next to Leah’s ear and explained quietly, “The protections on the Vatican Gate are ancient and irreplaceable, so that if they manage to get it open it’s going to stay open.” 

Leah nodded thoughtfully. “Who’s Cerberus?” 

“You would know him as the three-headed dog from Greek mythology, guardian of the gates to the underworld,” Danika murmured. 

“What, like Fluffy from Harry Potter?” 

Danika stared blankly at her. “He is the father of all hellhounds, a vicious beast born of smoke, hellfire and rage. Why would he be fluffy?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Leah said quickly. “Why would they want to release him?”

“Part of his job is keeping the demons within the confines of Hell, so he would retrieve them if released.”

Leah perked up at that. “That’s good, right? They let him out, he kills the demons and we get to go home.” 

Danika let out a low chuckle. “In theory, he would collect them and go straight home. In practice, however, he may just decide to ignore his duties and wreak havoc on the surface, or even destroy the Gate protections and let even more out.” 

“That would be unfortunate,” Leah noted. 

“Especially for your mother,” she added, “Since Cerberus would collect Sofiya and either drag your mother to Hell with it or leave her to die.” 

Leah frowned. “Okay, so we don’t want to go with the Cerberus idea. Then what?” 

Janna waved a hand, evidently having decided that the hunters had argued for long enough. They silenced themselves within moments. 

“Cardinal Sforza has given us twenty-four hours to exorcise the demons, so the option of hunting them down is out, even if there were omens or killings for us to track.” Janna continued. “We need to know what they are doing, since they are apparently not interested in the human population.” 

Danika stood, attracting the attention of the seated hunters. “Since we appear to have no other options, I suggest an interrogation.” 

Janna looked at her for a long moment before glancing around. Nobody looked very happy with the suggestion. “Anyone got any better ideas?” 

Silence greeted the question. 

“I’m going to take that as a no,” Janna declared. “Danika, we’re on a limited time frame here, I want answers in six hours or less.” 

The girl nodded tersely and strode out of the room, crooking her finger at several hunters who followed her through the door. 

Janna turned back to the gathering. “As of now, we are on double security. I want traps covering the ceilings and floors of the surface buildings, check with Danika on the positioning.” A group of five moved away with purpose. “Thomas, run through the feeds for the last week to see if we missed anything. Dieter, we’re going to need coffee.” Leah watched as Janna continued to delegate, sending every hunter away to perform various tasks, each more obscure than the next, until there was nobody left in the room except the two of them. 

When the last one had disappeared through the doorway, Janna dropped into a chair beside Leah and pinched the bridge of her nose. 

“Danika is going to torture a demon,” Leah said with certainty. 

“What? Oh, yes,” Janna agreed, rubbing at her face. “Welcome to Hotel Guantanamo; chains, knives and all the holy water you can breathe.” 

Leah was silent and Janna looked expectantly at her. “That was a joke dear, you’re allowed to laugh.” 

“She’s going to torture somebody! That’s not right!” 

Janna yawned and stretched back in the chair. “Human rights only apply to humans, Leah. I’m going to go get some shut-eye.” 

Leah’s grandmother got up and meandered out of the room, leaving Leah there by herself. 

“It’s not right,” she repeated quietly. 

 

Some time later, she had tracked down Pierre and Stefan, who were painting Traps in the main surface building. 

“What’s the deal with Danika,” she demanded. 

Pierre groaned. “I thought we covered this already.” 

“Apparently not,” Stefan muttered. 

“I don’t mean why she’s so mean to me,” Leah said impatiently, “I mean why she’s so eager to torture demons.” 

“They’re demons, Leah,” Pierre said tiredly. “They’re like the most evil thing ever. Why would you not be okay with hurting them?” 

“There is a difference between being okay with doing something and jumping out of your seat to be the first,” Leah pointed out. “She’s not just petty, she’s genuinely sadistic! How can somebody like that be effective as a hunter?” 

They glanced at one another uneasily. Stefan put down his paintbrush and Pierre climbed down the stepladder, both of them sitting down on the bench against the wall. “We first met her on a werewolf hunt in Poland,” Pierre began quietly. “I don’t even remember the name of the town.” 

“We killed the werewolf but the full moon was coming up and we were sure he’d bitten others,” Stefan continued.

“We worked out that he was responsible for the string of muggings in the area and followed the victims back, checked out their bites to make sure they were clean.” Pierre hesitated. “The last one was a night nurse in the local paediatric ward.”

Leah blanched. 

“Yeah, that was our reaction too,” Stefan said grimly. “By the time we got there, he had already bitten half the kids.”

“We killed the nurse, but we didn’t know what to do with the kids, so we locked them in a room and called Yosef.”

“He was our supervisor at that point,” Stefan explained. 

“Yosef was in Spain but he rang Janna and she knew that Danika was in the northern Ukraine on a hunt,” Pierre continued. “We kept the kids in lockdown while she took the train, but while I was picking her up from the station some of them transformed and broke through our defences.”

“They infected the whole ward,” Stefan said sickly. “They were monsters, claws and teeth and all, but they were still just little kids and I couldn’t do much except bar off the ward and wait.” 

“Danika and I got back from the train station and Stefan had cleared the hospital, something about a bomb threat.” Pierre grimaced. “He told her about the other infected ones and she just pulled out this sword…”

“It was a samurai sword, plated with silver,” Stefan told her. “Danika said that she’d just recently gotten it and had wanted to take it on a test run before bringing it on a real hunt.”

Neither of them continued, instead sitting there with queasy expressions. 

“Well?” Leah finally prompted. 

Pierre sucked in a deep breath. “She walked in and killed them, every one.”

“Just like that?” she whispered. 

“Just like that,” Stefan confirmed. “She seemed surprised that we weren’t joining her, had assumed that we just wanted backup.”

“After she finished with them, we moved the bodies back into their beds,” Pierre murmured. “She jury-rigged a bomb with the oxygen tanks and we got the hell out of there.” 

Stefan swallowed thickly. “There were thirty-two. I counted them. They were so small…”

Leah thought that she was going to throw up. “She murdered a bunch of children?”

“It had to be done,” Pierre said quietly. “You have to understand that, they were going to go home and kill their families, kill their neighbours. It would have been a massacre.” 

“So killing children is the answer?” Leah demanded. 

Stefan held up his hands. “It was, it really was. Don’t get me wrong, it was the logical, responsible thing to do…”

“It’s just that nobody right in the head would have been able to do it,” finished Pierre. “It was the right thing to do, but no person in the world should be able to kill thirty-two children with a samurai sword and walk away without flinching.”

“So what, she’s some kind of psychopath?” Leah asked, glancing from one to the other. 

Stefan shrugged. “Quite possibly. I don’t know much about her personal history, aside from the mob thing which might just be a rumour, but Yuri has told me that she has a Srebrenican accent to her Bosnian, which would explain quite a bit.”

“She would have been about ten at the time,” Pierre added. “She’s pretty well adjusted if it’s true, relatively speaking.” 

“Right,” Leah said slowly. “So is she a good hunter?”

“Oh, the best,” Stefan said hurriedly. 

Pierre nodded enthusiastically. “She’s the best hunter I’ve ever seen, without a doubt.”

“She’s like a hurricane,” Stefan added. “Once she’s going, she can’t be beat.”

“I only saw her go all out once,” Pierre said, “And that was when Janna broke her hip last year.”

Leah frowned. She hadn’t heard about that. Weren’t broken hips really serious for old people?

“She went nuts,” Pierre continued. “Cleaned out the whole skinwalker den, and then the pack that was going to meet with them. Most of the time she’s cautious because she’s working with others, but then she just ignored us and smashed them.”

“Literally,” Stefan told her earnestly. “We threw a couple of silver shrapnel grenades in through the windows just as she burst in, caught the ones in the entrance unawares; injured half and disorientated the rest. She ran out of rounds six feet through the door so she ditched it and pulled out her warhammer- have you seen that? It’s basically a sledgehammer with a spike on one side, Danika had it silver plated- and started swinging.”

“It’s an impractical weapon, really, but she’d soaked her clothes in silver iodide. None of them dared bite her but they did try to claw, and she was covered in cuts by the time she was done but I swear she didn’t even notice,” Pierre continued enthusiastically. “Have you ever seen somebody get their heads smashed in with a sledgehammer?”

Leah shook her head mutely. 

“It’s awesome, is what it is,” Pierre told her. “It practically explodes, it’s amazing. Anyway, she’s smashing them to bits and she’s killed her way to the courtyard- we were pretty much just staying out of her way- when this absolutely enormous skinwalker arrives. This guy was built like a brick wall and he comes charging out and they just stare at each other. Next thing we know, she’s hefting the sledge and he transforms into a wolf the size of a horse, and he runs towards her.”

“What happened next?” Leah gasped. 

Stefan nudged her shoulder. “A pause for dramatic effect, that’s what.”

Pierre nodded and continued, “I honestly thought she was going to try to hit it with the hammer, but at the very last moment she draws Janna’s pistol and shoots it between the eyes. She dived to avoid it but it was already collapsing to the floor. Now, a regular bullet won’t actually kill a skinwalker, but a bullet to the brain is a pretty serious thing for anybody and it’s twitching and drooling on the floor really pathetically while it tries to heal. Danika at this point has the creepiest fucking smile I have ever seen anybody wear and slams the sledge into its head, which explodes like an overripe fruit.”

Leah nodded, wide-eyed. “How could she even do that stuff? Wouldn’t you have to be incredibly quick and freakishly strong to do all that?”

“She does have weirdly large hands,” Stefan noted.

“The mystique of the whole thing was somewhat dispelled when the meth ran out and I had to sit with her while she hallucinated and threw up all over me,” Pierre admitted. “And then deal with her constant bitching when I stitched up all her cuts and they itched for weeks.” 

“We’ve done a few jobs with her since then,” added Stefan, “She only really hunted before Janna broke her hip. Now she doesn’t; she’s the one we all call in when we’ve found the creature and need help killing it. She’s racked up a count to rival Yosef’s and he’s supernaturally lucky.”

“I’m still winning,” Yosef pointed out, strolling through a nearby doorway, paint bucket and brush in hand.

“You started years before her,” Pierre retorted. “Kills per year, she’s winning now.” 

“Which doesn’t even make sense,” Yosef grumbled, “Because I’m ex-fucking-Mossad and I have a kangaroo paw and she just started hunting all of five years ago.” 

Leah glanced around carefully before leaning in and murmuring, “Are we sure she’s not a monster or a wished creature of some kind?” 

“She heals at normal rates,” Pierre told her. 

Stefan nodded thoughtfully. “She’s got the normal human vulnerabilities as well; not injured by silver or salt.”

“If she was a wished creature or some kind of monster we don’t know of, she wouldn’t necessarily be injured by those things,” Pierre pointed out. 

“Some goddess from a long-dead religion?” Stefan suggested. 

“She likes walnuts and picks up languages quite fast,” Pierre added, apparently hoping that this information would suddenly remind them of a goddess they’d heard of but forgotten until now. 

Stefan grinned. “Don’t forget the freakishly large hands.” 

Leah frowned. “Gods eat people though, right? Wouldn’t it be pretty obvious?” 

“If she’s mostly abstaining from human flesh, it could explain why she heals like a human and has no apparent powers,” Stefan said thoughtfully. 

Yosef watched them with an amused smile but he frowned when they began to discuss possible ways of testing the girl. “She’s not a monster,” he interjected. “It’s obvious why she’s so effective and if you three had more experience in the field you would have spotted it already.” 

Leah, Pierre and Stefan glanced at one another uncertainly. Seconds ticked by in an awkward silence.

“We got nothing,” Pierre said finally. 

Yosef sighed. “Look, when you’re in the middle of a fight with a monster and you’re about to stab them, you hesitate, right?”

Pierre and Stefan were silent. 

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Yosef assured them. “Perfectly normal, healthy reaction; even when you’re in the heat of the moment, you hesitate to end a life.”

They nodded grimly. 

“And it works the other way too; when something big and powerful turns up, there’s this moment of hesitation before you fling yourself into the fray. Whatever you do, however good you are, there’s still a moment when you pause because in your heart, you don’t want to die. It’s not cowardice, it’s instinct.”

“So what, she doesn’t hesitate? That’s the big awesome secret?” Leah asked doubtfully. 

“She doesn’t hesitate to kill and she doesn’t hesitate when she might be killed,” Yosef said bluntly. “That’s enough to give her an edge.” He directed his attention to Leah. “Don’t be concerned about what Danika is willing to do, be concerned with what you aren’t willing to do. Stefan and Pierre got a dozen more kids infected because they weren’t capable of doing the job, which means a dozen more dead because of their conscience. I’m not saying it was bad,” he added at their frowns, “I’m just saying that you can’t go throwing stones at somebody for doing the right thing. It was the right thing to do then and the interrogation is the right thing to do now, regardless of how you feel about it.”

“So it doesn’t concern you that she’s gleeful about torturing somebody,” Leah asked. 

Yosef shrugged. “I’m just glad there’s somebody willing to do the dirty work, and if she enjoys it that’s her business. Now get back to work! I swear, you lot gossip like old women.”


End file.
